Yumary and Hannah presented their summer research (graciously funded by CSUSM's Summer Scholars program, and a GPSM grant from CSUSM's Office of Graduate Studies and Research to Arun Sethuraman) at the Summer Scholars' Showcase on Wednesday, 8/9/2017. They will also present this poster at the 2nd Annual CSU Symposium at UCLA on 8/14/2017 (Monday). Kudos to their hard work all summer, and continued work on this project!

Sethuraman and Hey, in collaboration with TUTeach hosted a workshop on genomics and bioinformatics for high school teachers and teachers in training the week of June 26th - 30th, 2017. Teachers and trainees were paired up and introduced to the field of genomic sequence analyses and how they can incorporate bioinformatics (through introductory Python coding) in their classrooms. Watch this space for all the amazing lesson plans that were developed during this week-long session!

We are so proud of our newest graduates, Katie, Melissa, Michael, Shiori, and James! Congratulations on your graduation! Here are a few neat pictures from graduation last weekend. We wish you the best in all your future endeavors.

Our new manuscript on the demographic histories of three species of predatory lady beetles across the United States is now out in Insect Science. Special congrats to our lab members, Yumary and Michael on their first publication! Read the paper ahead of print here.

The Sethuraman Lab welcomes two new graduate students, Bryce Summerhays and Melissa Lynch this Fall!

Bryce is a born, and home-grown San Diegan who has always had a passion for nature having a documentary filmmaker for a father. He has worked with exotic animal species for over 10 years, first volunteering when he was 16, teaching people about animals and conservation. He attended Palomar College and then went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Biology at the University of California, San Diego. He currently works for the San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, continuing his work with animals and passion for conservation. He volunteered for a year assisting in the Holway Lab at UCSD getting his first taste of working in a field and on a paper ("The broader ecological effects of species invasion on protection mutualisms", LeVan et al. 2013)

His interests include population genetics and conservation.

Melissa is no stranger to the lab - she has been working with us since Fall 2016 as an undergraduate researcher. She will continue her work on un-sampled "ghost" populations, and developing new software/methods for studying it as a Masters student. She also recently won a travel award to the Population Genomics Symposium at the EMBO in Italy!

Our new manuscript describing the recent evolutionary history of three species of predatory coccinellids used in biological control (Hippodamia convergens, Coccinella septempunctata, Harmonia axyridis) across North American populations has now been accepted to Insect Science! Watch this space for links to the full manuscript in the coming weeks!

Our new manuscript on over-wintering behavior and nesting phenology of Western painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) has now been published in Evolutionary Ecology Research. Thanks to Dr. Tim Mitchell for putting this together after all these years! You can read the paper here.

Melissa was recently selected among a diverse group of 120 applicants to attend the EMBO's Population Genomics workshop in Napoli, Italy. Congrats to Melissa, and we hope that this will be an excellent opportunity for her as she forays into graduate studies in the Sethuraman Lab! More information about the workshop can be accessed here.